St. Ambrose Traversari - Works

Works

His works include a treatise on the Holy Eucharist, one on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, many lives of saints, as well as a history of his term as Prior General of the Camaldolese. He also translated from Greek into Latin a life of St. John Chrysostom (Venice, 1533); the Spiritual Wisdom of John Moschus; The Ladder of Divine Ascent of St. John Climacus (Venice, 1531), P.G., LXXXVIII. Between 1424 and 1433 he worked on the translation of the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, which came to be widely circulated in manuscript form and was published at Rome in 1472 (the first printed edition of the Lives; the Greek text was printed only in 1533). He also translated four books against the errors of the Greeks, by Manuel Kalekas, Patriarch of Constantinople, a Dominican friar (Ingolstadt, 1608), P.G., CLII, col. 13-661, a work known only through Ambrose's translation.

He also translated many homilies of St. John Chrysostom; the treatise of the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on the celestial hierarchy; St. Basil's treatise on virginity; thirty nine discourses of St. Ephrem the Syrian, and many other works of the Fathers and writers of the Greek Church. Dom Mabillon's Letters and Orations of St. Ambrose of Camaldoli was published at Florence, 1759.

Selected works:

• Hodoeporicon, diary of a journey visiting the monasteries of Italy
• Epistolarium, correspondence
• translations of
  • Palladius, Life of Chrysostom;
  • Ephraem Syrus, Nineteen Sermons of Ephraem Syrus
  • St Basil, On Virginity.
  • Diogenes Laërtius, Vitae philosophorum (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers)
  • Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (1436)

A number of his manuscripts remain in the library of St Mark at Venice.